Swarm Season

Pictures!
#21

I’ve raised bees for years and I’m sorry to break it to you, but no bees are immune to Foulbrood, either European or American.

It’s not a virus, so therefore immunity is not possible. It is possible, however, that you were using stock that dealt with Foulbrood well and was not negatively effected by it.

American Foulbrood is best dealt with by burning the hive, bees and all, and most bees now can deal with European Foulbrood, thanks to beekeepers like yourself that crossed many lines to attain resistance to it.

In my largest days, I was running about 100 hives between NY and GA, and never came across anyone that ever claimed that there is immunity to Foulbrood.

Also, all native honeybees died out here in North America pre European colonization. Our honey bees now are mainly from European descent.

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#22

Look at the bees closely and compare my photo and the bees below. My grandfather had about 50 hives of them as did I. @39thparallel has a very nice breed of bees i like very much.

German bees

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yFXBslYMXtU

Many bees likely are crossed with these which were the true black honeybee and yes though thought to be extinct they are still very much alive. You compare the swarm and decide what type they are most like.

Immune in the sense the hives do not exhibit symptoms. All other hives that were in this area originally died of foulbrood but mine did not.

Italian bees are very much a different color

Buckfast

Carniolan

Caucasian

Russian bees

Africanized bees

Some bees are highly resistant to foul brood and mites (see attachment)
spivakHYG-AFB01en.pdf (400.4 KB)

For bees that dont have resistance soon their will be a vaccine World's First Insect Vaccine Could Help Bees Fight Off Deadly Disease : The Salt : NPR

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#23

I understand what you are saying in regards to the ancestry of those bees. They do not appear to have much Italian influence in them. That is a nice size swarm that I think any beek would love to have in a hive.

My bees are highly Carniolan in breeding, but with open mated queens, its really hard to tell what is truely in there! If you have a high number of wild swarms, you may still have lots of the German Black heritage around, and for that I am jealous!

I pulled a hive out of a house once that was extremely large, and they were mostly black with a few light bees mixed in, again, open mating. I believe that they were descendants of some bees that escaped captivity early on before there were to many outside influences. They were extremely productive, but mean as heck! I tried to requeen that hive a few times but without luck. They ended up getting the dawn dish soap treatment as I couldn’t keep them anymore, the neighbors were complaining about getting head butted everytime they went outside.

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#24

@Kellogg_Hill_Farms
Yes they like to head butt people. They are a long way from anyone where they are. They did not go into the hive i gave them but instead went into my other nearby hive and took that one over. Very consistent with the type of bee they are. I do not consider wealth money rather like the bible says “a land flowing with milk & honey”. The bees need to be the aggresive way these are here just to survive here. Got some sweet italians once but the skunks bothered them everyday. If a skunk bothers these bees they will hunt him down and his family and none of the skunks will see anything but the insides of their swollen eyes for a week. You here their voice go up when your within 10 feet. If you dont understand they will head butt you 5 or 6 at a time. If you leave they will let you if you stay they will sting you until you leave. You open that hive be prepared for a half mile long battle. I was working bees once and some escape cows were in my field. Those cows got blamed for being with me and i saw their bag legs kick up multiple times on their way home. Never saw the cows come back. A man jokingly said once he could come steal a hive from me and i said sure just pick them up when your ready. If you touch the hive of bees like that its war. My cousin once tried in the dark to take some honey and i reminded him there is no light switch inside a hive so they can sting you just fine in the dark the difference being they are all home. He was wearing a bee suite. Like the man working the russian bees in the video above when they are really angry you will leave.

#25

I don’t keep bees now but I have noticed a few more showing up each year in my blueberry bushes. Some have the classic Italian look and some are darker. When you consider the mating procedure most all bees would be a mixture of several varieties (whatever types are in your area). About the only way to keep a strain somewhat pure is through regularly re-queening from a trusted source. I once kept 65 hives and raised my own queens from selected queens but as we know each new queen mates with an unknown stain. In my opinion the wild bees that are surviving could hold the genes for resistance to many issues.

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#26

@Auburn
Provided the other varities are there for the queen to mate with. I may bring in russian bees to breed in mite resistance for future wild generations. I know i said im done interfering but that would ensure bees in my area long after me. If the bees do well people live if not long term people will die. Pollination is very important.

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#27

@clarkinks Having Second thoughts on the Russian bees Greg Collins and his 3 Deep Hive of Aggressive Russian Honey Bees - YouTube

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#28

Thats a hot hive! Russian bees are known to be highly agressive!

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#29

Clark, That was a hot hive from poor bee handling. No where near enough smoke, clumsy handling, and not enough time from smoke application to manipulation. A little smoke under the lid when they opened it would of made a huge difference.
In the comments, the beekeepers admitted that they were inexperienced and it showed. I helped a friend hive 20 nucs today with very little excitement just careful handling and sufficient smoke. Not picking at you, Clark, but a video of some bad hive management.
Phil.

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#30

@Chikn i saw those things as well but my point is that hive would still have blacked both eyes and nailed your shirt on had you not been suited up. Some bees you can work and never be stung without smoke. When i see that type of thing mites or poor genetics is usually the culprit. Unfortunately here in Kansas we need just that type of bee to survive. For a residential lot in a crowded neighborhood those bees are to hot to have. They are a lawsuit waiting to happen. I did not take it as you “picking at” me though im sticking with what i said having owned hot bees and not there is a world of difference and its best to be mindful of it. Agree with you he was inexperienced, he might as well have opened the hive on a rainy day first thing in the morning when the bees were all home and extra guard bees were bored after a month long skunk raid to eat bees. He was clearly provoking the bees for purpose of the video. There are people who anger bees in ways they dont realize. Once i was working bees and the ticks or chiggers were horrible that year to the point of getting bites on old bites. I sprayed with off which was a big mistake. Several generations back have been been bee keepers in my family and they taught me things people are seldom taught now like keeping bees facing east so bees work extra time everyday because the sun wakes them up early. They did not ever use off though and my grandpa and i laughed when i explained to him how much insect repellant makes bees angry. They are insects so its a no brainer but sometimes we learn the hard way. My grandpa has not been alive for a long time now but we le extensively about things and he taught me all his tricks as did my grandmother. Grandma caught swarms frequently and everyone said she was legendary at it so when i asked her how she said she would beat pans together to bring them down out of the sky as they flew over. She was at one with nature more so than anyone i ever met. My grandmother spoke of a small child in my family who while playing with other children would slip her small hands inside the hive and steal honey to eat as she played. My grandmother was shocked by this since the hive was highly agressive typically. Some people smell a certain way due to illness or genetics and the bees dont like it. Once i begin sweating bees become offended by my odor. Until that time i have no worries around bees at all. Nature tells me many things about people i would not pick up on by myself. A friend was being attacked by mosquitos once while we fished i pointed out to him he had an illness which was likely diabetes. He let me know later i was right. My grandmother would point things out to me like when a person had veins close to the surface of the skin in their ears they had a heart problem. In the old days there was no cure so they knew but told noone. The cherokee side of my family were highly observant people and taught me things like that. Bees when they raise their voice as we approach expect us to understand if not they will educate us on what it means. People are out of touch with these things sometimes. I would not recommend working bees with honey on your breath either , its got me in trouble before.

#31

“Second thoughts on Russians…”

Russians seem to do really well with the cold. While they may be better with mites, I haven’t had problems with mites on any colonies while using a sound mite control regimen. The mites are still there, but are manageable. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t base my choice of genetics on how hot someone’s bees get in a YouTube video. If the genetics will keep your girls alive over winter, everything else can be managed for, even if you need to wear the equivalent of armor late in the season.

My situation, thoughts on breeds, and a little bit about how I manage:

I don’t think there’s much to worry about with respect to breed. I’ve kept italians, carnies, saskatrazz, and Russians. I’ve found the same hive, regardless of genetics, can be delightfully docile to downright evil! Even the Russians are nice most of the time.

Docile times… calm wind, neither cool nor hot, nectar flowing, smaller than larger colony, girls are out and about.

Evil times… largely the opposite of above.

I live in northern Michigan where spring comes late and fall comes early. Round about mid-late June, the hives will be big and everything will be in bloom to the point that a strong hive can put in 5-10 lbs of nectar per day. Nectar can come in fast enough that a ripened frame is really rare until after the flow stops. Mid August, the hives can be huge and things largely dry up. If I’m lucky, boxes will be fully ripened by mid September. This, of course, is when we start getting frost.

The point… I - can’t - take honey until very late in the season when my hives are huge, there’s nothing coming in, and the nights/days are cold. Of course, the girls are all cooped up and pissy. I’ve had colonies where I need welding gloves with duct tape to seal them to my suit. I usually wear gaiters. Failure to do either results in bees tunneling into my gloves/boots. The bees on the guys veil in the video? Ha! That was cute! Weren’t nuthin but a thing. My harvesting experience… not fun. (I’m convinced the girls know that they’ll need those stores through May (nearly 8 mos) Fighting to the death is a no-brainer for them when I steal their Honey in the fall.)

All that, coupled with losing more than half of my hives to starvation two winters ago, has made made me adapt my management technique to leave everything on the hives until spring. I just removed the supers last week. The bees didn’t care. The weather was nice.

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#32

@LTCider

Brian,

It is worth noting in the south apiaries use one deep 9 5/8" box to winter bees. In Kansas 6a we use 2 deep 9 5/8" boxes. I would imagine in zone 3 or 4 you use 3 deep 9 5/8" boxes. Italians don’t cut back laying eggs frequently like carniolans as it gets colder. This made me realize i needed to cross the two types of bees. Genetics are key to everything. Italians make much more honey then any other bee i have had. The best bees for honey production ive owned were from Calvert Apiaries. They made up to 10 gallons of honey per year. They cannot be contacted now and are presumably out of business after generations of selling packages and queens. More sellers can be found here Beekeeping Resource List | NC State Extension one of my favorite suppliers for equipment is https://westernbee.com

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#33

Before deciding to leave everything til spring, I shot for 5 medium supers… somewhere between 3 and 4 deep equivalent. My last pre winter disturbance is resource re-allocation. A colony with 8 boxes may lose a couple to colonies with less. Three colonies got a box or two last fall. Two still entered winter with 8/9 boxes.

The bee club here has been pretty active in figuring out how to make things work for newbs…so many newbs! I think the general rule is that a package might grow enough to have stores to survive winter. If you want honey, you’ll need a survivor hive. “We can either make bees or make honey, not both.”

My best colony to date built to 12 medium boxes (was it 13? Memory problems) Either way, it was big enough that I started reallocating early in the season. (Ladders don’t belong in an apiary!) I’ll throw out a spitball guess that it made 250 lbs of honey. It’s remarkable to throw two boxes on a hive and to come back in a week or so and they’re drawn and packed!

Growing the apiary… I have a two year survivor queen. I’m hoping she lasts long enough to make a bunch of splits that can requeen themselves. Maybe four? They’ll be smaller this fall, for sure, and will likely enter winter as nuc-boxes with 3 reallocated boxes of honey. Next year, they’ll hopefully grow enough to bury me in honey.

As this thread started as a swarm discussion… our swarm season starts hitting hard in June. The rule of thumb on catching swarms is that it better be early or it won’t be able to build sufficiently to over-winter. Reallocation changes the calculus a bit. I caught a small swarm in early September. I nuc’d em and added a frame of brood from a donor hive. They’re looking great right now! They overwintered on 3.5 boxes of honey and a sugar board. I took four frames of honey from them last week.

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#34

If i see a weak 9 5/8" colony that was a swarm by july and they are not 1/2 way done drawing out the second 9 5/8" box i grab the box and set it on top of the other strong hive confident they will work it out. Better to know what i have instead of thinking there will be a miracle. By september the wax moths will take over a weak colony here.

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#35

One of the few upsides of living so far north… many pests (wax moths) have it too hard to be happy as well.

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#36

IF I can get a hive off the ground, have had horrible luck this year with my first package of bees, came with a dead queen and replacement seems to be laying only drones. I ordered a couple 6 frame deep nucs I was going to try to winter in, they are poly material and supposed to insulate much better than wood does…

#37

According to the Russian bee breeders website, pure Russians are not aggressive but, the hybrids may be. My queens are Russian Italian Hybrids.

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#38

This is a really strange year for nectar flow, not near as bad as last year when the super late frost stopped all of the spring nectar producing trees and caused a three week dearth. The weird part is at least the crabapples near me came early but not near as strong as normal, the dandelions came a week early but are ramping down, however the clover is up. Nectar flow is just not where it needs to be for more swarms this year (although it may be early to say that) and its really sad because most all hives got stopped from swarming last year here also.
I very much hope we get some strong nectar flows soon, however we do not have the mass of sourwoods or lindens the bees really need here. Here a large colony produces around 120lbs you may get more if you have a real good location with some summer flowering trees.

My black bees are small cell natural Survivor Carnolian/Caucasians, they have a wonderful temperament. Sadly all the italian bees around here do tons of robbing and disease introduction. I wish those bees would stay in the southern states and keep producing the high fructose honey for everyone.[Uploading:

here is one expressing more carnolian traits, the neighbor italian is fatter and probably in a plastic cell

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Here is one expressing more caucasian traits its hard to see but they are grey instead of yellow

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Here is a queen bumblebee earthquaking it for the pollen

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#39

Here in central Montana, the Dandelions and lilacs are in full bloom as well as the service berries and crab apple trees. I’ve seen bumble bees, leaf cutter bees and some mud dobbers but no honey bees. Last year, there seamed to be a lot of smaller, darker feral type bees around and I located a couple thriving bee trees. There doesn’t appear to be any activity around them this spring so I’m afraid that the Polar Vortexes and wild swings in the weather of last winter may have decimated the local bees. I lost a couple well established apple trees, some honeyberries and U of S dwarf cherries due to the extremely wet, warm Fall weather abruptly switching to sub zero high temperatures, followed by a long, cold winter and late spring green-up. I have several swarm traps set out but am doubtful if there will be any honey bees around until the commercial beekeepers move back up here in late June or early July.

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